


Folie à Deux

by fleurdelilies



Series: the fault, dear Harrie, is not in our stars [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Gen, Genderbending, Harrie is a girl, Harrie is a twelve-year-old girl, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Year Two AU, everyone else stays the same, this is not smut or romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:48:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23827861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurdelilies/pseuds/fleurdelilies
Summary: At twelve years old, Harriet Potter is an unusual witch: her parents are dead, said parents were murdered by a genocidal maniac, and said genocidal maniac is none other than her soulmate.However, with a murderous beast on the hunt at Hogwarts, Harrie has a much bigger issue on her hands than the words inscribed upon her arm—like stopping whoever is responsible for the attack on her best friend.Funny how some problems turn out to be one and the same.one-shot series.
Relationships: Daphne Greengrass/Neville Longbottom, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, Harry Potter/Voldemort, Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Series: the fault, dear Harrie, is not in our stars [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1458613
Comments: 24
Kudos: 174





	Folie à Deux

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, I'm happy to present the follow-up to part one of this series. The feedback to Fait Accompli was a very pleasant surprise and I'm very appreciative of every comment, kudos, and reader. Thank you so much, and I hope you enjoy this next instalment of Harrie's journey in equal measure.
> 
> The following is a work of fiction. All recognizable text and/or characters are sourced from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998) and belongs to J. K. Rowling.

_**folie à deux** _

origin. Mid 19th century from French, literally ‘madness of two’.

def. A condition in which two people who are closely involved with each other share one or more delusions.

* * *

Not for the first time in her young life, Harriet Potter is struck with the undeniable certainty that she is about to die.

Tendrils of blinding pain wind up her forearm, where, only seconds prior, a massive venomous snake had sunk a lethally sharp fang into her bare flesh. Cheek pressed against the damp cold of the chamber’s flooded marble floor, Harrie shivers helplessly and blearily looks on as viscous scarlet bleeds through the sleeve of her robes. Vision blurring, the Chamber of Secrets’ cavernous ceiling dissolves into a whirl of darkness, and the small crumpled figure in black school robes taunts Harrie with defeat, lying motionless a few feet out of reach.

Above her looms a tall, boyish figure—Tom—no, _Voldemort_ , who gently runs the tip of Harrie’s stolen wand over the curve of her thin cheek. “You’re dead, Harriet Potter,” whispers Voldemort softly, and her soulmate’s handsome young face twists into a smile.

* * *

It all began as, undoubtedly, the worst and wettest summer of Harriet Dorea Potter’s brief existence.

Frequent rainfall in Surrey meant long days spent trudging in muddy hedges trimming Aunt Petunia’s prized rose bushes—and nearly as many nights locked in her room, after being thoroughly scolded for tracking muck through her aunt’s spotless kitchen. The monotonous cycle begins again in the mornings, with a sharp rap on her bedroom door and her aunt’s shrill voice, demanding Harrie come downstairs to help with breakfast.

Though Harrie misses Hogwarts terribly, a queer feeling like a constant stomach-ache, she recognizes that the castle’s comforts have made her less resilient to life with the Dursleys. Softer, more _vulnerable_. And Harrie has always hated feeling weak.

On the night of her twelfth birthday, Harrie lies sweaty and forgotten on the floor of the second bedroom, amongst piles of Dudley’s discarded playthings. Moonlight streams in through the curtains and the low murmur of dinner conversation drifts up the stairs, blending with Hedwig’s soft hooting to lull Harrie to sleep, despite the rumble in her stomach. If she is lucky enough to avoid a nightmare, the little witch can close her eyes and pretend she is back at school, maybe sprawled atop the hard grass of the Quidditch pitch.

All is almost well—of course, until it isn’t.

An acute sense of injustice rankles inside of Harrie at the sight of Aunt Petunia’s magnificent pavlova, which she’d been made to whip by hand into glossy-white peaked perfection, now dripping sticky-sweet from Mrs Mason’s impeccably coiffed curls. Not even a shimmer of magic remains to indicate the spot where Dobby had disappeared into thin air.

 _As you know, underage wizards are not permitted to perform spells outside school, and further spellwork on your part may lead to expulsion from said school_ —

_Enjoy your holidays! Yours sincerely, Mafalda Hopkirk_

What amounts to Harrie’s prison sentence is signed with a cheerful flourish. Both cage and owl familiar disappear from Harrie’s bedroom the following morning, lock clicking ominously behind Aunt Petunia. Bars go up on Harrie’s window and food is slipped through the cat flap in her door, meagre portions of cold leftovers that appear three times a day like clockwork. Miserable and afraid to sleep lest she wake the Dursleys with her nightmares, Harrie begins to suspect that Hogwarts is less reality and more a daydream conjured by constant hunger.

Only the words on her wrist, still hidden by the dainty gold shieldmark Aunt Petunia was unable to pry off with her bony fingers, remain a constant reminder that magic is real. That Harrie herself is magical too and that there is a world out there that knows her, that accepts her—if only she could send Hermione another letter, _if only—_

Without much left to lose after the Dursleys’ show no sign of relenting, Harrie chooses to strike at midnight. First crawling through the cat flap on her door, she then skulks down to the kitchen and dials the number of a dental practice in Hertfordshire, listed under Dr and Dr Granger in the telephone directory. Victory feels so close as Harrie hastily whispers into the receiver, right before an outraged bellow interrupts her mid-message and Uncle Vernon seizes her by the scruff of her neck, dragging a flailing little girl back to her room.

Nonetheless, the reward is proven to be worth the risk when, on the first balmy Sunday afternoon in weeks, an insistent ringing of the doorbell pierces the bleak monotony of teatime at number four, Privet Drive.

 _“Get up!”_ The bedroom door slams open to reveal Aunt Petunia, freshly-manicured nails digging into Harrie’s forearm as she hauls the girl to her feet. “Get your things and _get out!”_

“What are you talking about?” Harrie mumbles, green eyes blinking in incomprehension.

A familiar girlish voice floats up from the parlour, a sound Harrie associates with warm fireplaces, study sessions in the library, and whispered confessions behind crimson four-poster curtains. Hands shaking with excitement, Harrie throws as many of her personal belongings as she can fit in one of Dudley’s old rucksacks, almost running out of the room before remembering her treasured photo album. Vaulting herself down the stairs as quickly as humanly possible, Harrie nearly falls flat on her face in the landing, before being immediately engulfed in a halo of riotous chocolate curls.

“Harrie!” cries out Hermione, deceptively strong arms holding her friend fast in a fierce hug.

“Good to see you, ‘Mione,” Harrie chokes out, heart singing despite the mouthful of hair.

After Harrie’s trunk, broomstick, and disgruntled owl are hastily retrieved from the cupboard under the stairs—and Hedwig is dispatched with a letter (“Mrs Longbottom will want to know that we’ve got you, Harrie”)—the Dursleys unceremoniously hand their niece over to the care of an attractive, well-dressed Muggle couple.

“Give us a ring and we’ll bring Harrie over whenever you’d like,” offers Hermione’s mum kindly, but the sour twist of Aunt Petunia’s mouth indicates no such call would be forthcoming.

Once Privet Drive is a distant reflection in the rear-view mirror of the Grangers’ car, the same model Uncle Vernon had openly admired when his boss visited, Harrie allows herself to relax against the supple leather backseat. Seated beside her best friend, the car window rolled down to let the sunshine warm her cheeks, Harrie almost feels as if she is flying.

“Oh, Harrie, _your hair!”_ exclaims Hermione in dismay, reaching for the shoulder-length ends of the haphazardly shorn black locks. Too busy revelling in freedom to care about her appearance, Harrie easily shrugs off her friend’s concern. It wasn’t anything Aunt Petunia hadn’t done before: loudly despairing of her unruly mane for a few days, before finally hacking it off with a pair of kitchen scissors.

As if unable to contain her anxious energy, Hermione chatters away at full speed, “Oh Harrie, we were so worried when you didn’t answer any of our letters! Neville says his grandmother was so upset that she wanted to come pick you up as well, but Mrs Longbottom would be a bit frightening for Muggles, wouldn’t she, Mum?” Obviously accustomed to her daughter’s vivacity and rapid-fire speech pattern, Dr Granger merely smiles fondly at them from the driver’s seat.

Not waiting for an answer, Hermione forges on: “And then _of course_ Ron and his brothers tried to organize some sort of mad prison break last week. They got caught nicking their father’s car—apparently Mr Weasley enchanted it to fly, even though he’s not supposed to since he works for the Ministry, and Ron wrote to say his mum is absolutely _livid_. Well, I guess they do deserve it since they could’ve gotten in so much trouble, but now we might not see them until September and … oh, Harrie, I’m _so_ glad you left that message. Why didn’t you reply to any of our letters?”

Concern shines sincerely in Hermione’s warm brown gaze, stirring discomfort in the pit of Harrie’s stomach. Even after a whole year of friendship, she still isn’t quite sure what to do when people worry about her, but Harrie quietly accepts the affectionate squeeze of Hermione’s hand in hers.

“I wish Ron hadn’t been caught,” Harrie replies. Privately, she grins at the mental image of Aunt Petunia, dressed in her floral robe with her blonde hair up in curlers, shrieking at Harrie from the lawn of Privet Drive while she speeds off into the night in a flying car.

For the rest of the summer, Harrie sleeps on a cosy double bed in the Grangers’ lavender-scented guest bedroom, stomach full of their delicious cooking and tired from long days spent adventuring with Hermione. Ensconced in soft pillows, it becomes easy to drift off and pretend she belongs in the Granger household, where Dr Richard always insists on serving her a second helping and Dr Helen uses gentle hands to teach Harrie how to disentangle her wild hair.

Only Hedwig, forever standing guard from the windowsill, sees the little witch toss and turn during restless sleep, brow creasing at the foreboding warning that pervades her dreams: _“Harriet Potter must not put herself in peril.”_

Sleepless nights notwithstanding, time passes swiftly in the weeks that follow Harrie’s rescue from Privet Drive. The girls are given free rein of the house and neighbourhood during the workdays—always under the watchful eye of Magali, the young French au pair—and weekends with the Grangers are religiously spent _en famille._ Hermione’s mum, in particular, has a knack for devising day trips to museums and tea rooms, libraries and outdoor markets that never feel as educational as they inadvertently always are.

Even so, Sunday afternoons are set aside for tea at Neville’s childhood home, hosted by his formidable grandmother.

Harrie first meets Augusta Longbottom at Diagon Alley, while shopping for school books. After the matronly witch nearly transfigures the Lockhart man into a cockatoo for accosting Harrie and her son during some self-absorbed publicity stunt, Harrie resolves to always remain in Mrs Longbottom’s good graces.

Somehow, despite the intimacy forged through surviving quite a few brushes with imminent death (including, but not limited to, defeating a twenty-foot troll together), Neville Longbottom forgets to mention that he was raised in an impressive rambling grey-stone Tudor manor. Thorndale Hall has housed the Longbottoms and their descendants for centuries, in a building so dizzyingly massive that Neville and his grandmother need only see his eccentric Uncle Alfie if they make the winding thirty-minute trek to his private wing.

However, more surprising than the heretofore unknown grandeur of Thorndale Hall, are the _other_ regular guests at the Longbottoms’ Sunday afternoon tea.

A sharp elbow to the side jolts Harrie out of her quiet surprise, understandably startled by the sight of Daphne Greengrass and her younger sister perched primly in the emerald velvet wingbacks of the Longbottom library. In response to his friends' soundless questions, Neville blushes pink up to his hairline, muttering unintelligibly and gesturing helplessly at his covered soulmark. The blonde witch smiles serenely, but her dark-haired younger sister hides a poorly disguised snicker.

The Fates have a very strange sense of humour, thinks Harrie for the thousandth time, as she watches her friend attentively offer Daphne a plateful of buttery scones, all under Mrs Longbottom’s approving gaze.

So passes the time in what turns out to be the most pleasant, if unexpectedly so, summer of Harrie’s life so far.

September arrives with a misty drizzle, not unlike the months leading up to it, but Harrie cannot bring herself to resent the dreary weather. Piling into the Grangers’ car early that morning, trunks safely secured in the back and Hedwig’s cage strapped into the middle backseat, Harrie is buzzing with excitement.

Finally, she is going _home_.

* * *

Despite having no evidence to his claim, Professor Snape most definitely blames Harriet Potter for what becomes known in the wizarding press as the Hogwarts Express Incident of 1992. Although there is no plausible explanation for how a twelve-year-old witch could have sealed the magical barrier of Platform 9¾, the Potions master readily pinpoints her as the mischief-maker responsible for leaving dozens of students stranded on the Muggle side of King’s Cross station.

No one is as vociferously outraged as the Malfoys, who arrive almost as early as the Granger party and are similarly barred entry to the platform. By the time the Weasleys finally make an appearance, barely minutes before the clock strikes eleven, the crowd has become so unmanageable that Ministry employees begin to corral them into a magically expanded waiting room, layering Muggle-Repelling charms over Notice-Me-Nots.

A tall, blonde-haired man, who Hermione correctly identifies as Draco’s father, promises retribution as he rails into a Ministry underling, who gratefully scurries away when Augusta Longbottom intervenes.

“That’s quite enough fuss, Lucius,” she reproaches sharply, as if Mr Malfoy were an errant schoolboy and not a fully-grown wizard. “The Ministry is doing what it can, we must be patient and set an example for the children.”

The elder Malfoy glowers in response. “Some of us, Mrs Longbottom, have set much higher standards for the Ministry. Even if those among us continuously miss the mark,” he sneers, looking pointedly at Mr Weasley.

“Careful young man,” Mrs Longbottom warns quietly, steely eyes darkening under the brim of her vulture hat. “The Malfoys have too many skeletons in their closets for you to be angering Ministry officials. How is that lovely sister of yours doing, Narcissa?”

Both of Draco’s parents turn a gratifying shade of grey, and Mr Malfoy nearly bowls over a nauseous-looking Neville as he storms off to harass another unsuspecting Ministry employee. Mr Weasley, Harrie notes, looks a bit as if Christmas has come early and eagerly engages Mrs Longbottom in a whispered conversation.

After the twins propose flying the family car up to Scotland, enthusiastically seconded by their younger siblings, another magical form of transportation is quickly procured. Mrs Weasley forcefully yet lovingly herds her redheaded children onto the Ministry-provided buses, which clearly have not seen daylight since Britain hosted the World Cup in 1964. Misty-eyed, Dr and Dr Granger send both girls off with hugs and a bagful of sugar-free sweets—Hermione’s mum even presses a lipsticked kiss against Harrie’s cheek, to the girl’s embarrassed surprise. After waving goodbye to the Grangers through the rain-spattered windowpane, Hermione insists on sitting in the lower deck to ward off motion sickness and, Harrie suspects, to avoid the Slytherin second-years holding court upstairs.

Curled up in her four-poster bed later that night, Harrie can’t help but consider whether Snape’s theory is right—it was Harrie’s trolley that had collided abruptly with the solid barrier. The incident with Platform 9¾ is, after all, only the first of many queer things happening at Hogwarts during Harrie’s second year.

For one, during their first weeks back, Harrie finds herself dedicating an inordinate amount of time to navigating the castle’s lesser trafficked corridors. Ducking behind rusty suits of armour or taking the long way to the library, much to Hermione’s displeasure, all in order to circumvent Lockhart’s superciliousness, Creevey’s camera, and Ron’s younger sister, Ginny (usually in that order).

Professor Lockhart is really a teacher in title only, a vacuous wizard who claims to have vanquished any number of Dark beings armed with only his brilliant smile and impeccable fashion sense. Even Hermione, whose brown cheeks flush prettily when faced with Lockhart’s blonde good-looks, begins to doubt his self-reported accomplishments by the second month of classes—although it does take the Cornish Pixie fiasco, two separate pop quizzes on Lockhart’s musical tastes, and a boisterous theatrical re-enactment that injures Dean Thomas’ ankle.

On top of assiduously avoiding Lockhart’s unsolicited advice on seeking fame, nothing chagrins Harrie more than the added factor of Colin Creevey, a Gryffindor first-year whose guerrilla-style approach to photography is inherently at odds with his squeaky demeanour. Despite Harrie flatly refusing Colin’s request for an autographed picture, the Weasley twins began hawking crudely-drawn stick figures of the Girl-Who-Lived at breakfast the following morning, advertised as a membership fee for the Unofficially Official Harriet Potter Fan Club.

Poor Ginny Weasley, who still puts her elbow in the butter dish whenever Harrie looks her way, blooms bright fuchsia and scowls at Fred when offered the vice-presidency.

The word ‘Mudblood’ is another unpleasant discovery for Harrie, first heard on the Quidditch pitch during one of Wood’s heathenish early-morning practices. At the sight of emerald training robes making their way across the green, the Gryffindor captain swears loudly, chorused by the Weasley twins who spot the brand-new racing brooms slung over their shoulders. When Hermione’s cutting insult ruthlessly takes down a gloating Malfoy, Harrie almost cheers in celebration. But when Malfoy hurls that degrading slur in reply (“No one asked your opinion, you filthy little Mudblood”), civilities are thrown to the wind and an all-out brawl erupts between both House teams.

Though Flint readily intercepts the twins’ bodily assault on Malfoy, the Slytherin captain doesn’t anticipate an enraged Wood charging at him from the side. A nasty jinx from Angelina incapacitates one of the other team’s Beaters, who’d rounded on the Gryffindor Chasers with a menacing flourish of red sparks. Even Ron plunges head-first into the melee, his wand crunching inauspiciously in his back pocket when Keeper Bletchley knocks him over with a well-aimed hex.

A warning hand stops Harrie from taking out her own wand. Wordlessly, Hermione points across the grounds, where Filch’s hobbled figure is limping furiously towards them.

_“Eat slugs, Malfoy!”_

Despite actively participating in the fight, with a shining black-eye as proof, Wood is highly disgruntled that all of his players, as well as Ron and Hermione, are sentenced to a month’s worth of detentions. His only solace is that the Slytherin Quidditch team is similarly punished, by a furious McGonagall no less, and will also be hindered during their first match of the season. When Neville, who’d preferred to sleep in after a long night of searching for Trevor, is caught up to speed, he seems unsurprised: “Gran always says the Malfoys are a load of bigots.”

Head still cradled in Hagrid’s dumpster-sized bucket, Ron echoes his agreement and coughs up another slug.

Of course, none of this really quite compares to the onset of panic and rumour-mongering that follows Hallowe’en, once the Chamber of Secrets is revealed to be open and the threat of a bloodthirsty monster hangs heavy over the castle.

_ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE._

The petrified Mrs Norris—her unseeing yellow eyes, her stiff body, and the scarlet dripping down ominously to the stone floor—is enough for fear, uncertainty, and mistrust to ripple through the halls of Hogwarts. “You’ll be next, Muggle-borns!” crows Draco Malfoy, pushing to the front of the whispering students. Flanked by his thuggish friends, his thin pale face appears almost peaky in the flickering torchlight.

That evening, Harrie sneaks out of her four-poster and wraps Hermione in a fierce hug, her usually level-headed friend quiet and shaken. Stroking a bowed head of curls, Harrie once more considers that the Fates got this whole soulmate business upside down.

The school year only takes a turn for the worse after the opening match of the season, by which point the Slytherin-Gryffindor rivalry has reached a dangerous fever pitch. Gryffindor eventually emerges from the game victorious, but a rogue Lockhart and his incompetent spellwork land Harrie in the Hospital Wing for an overnight stay. Madame Pomfrey fusses over her boneless arm, Dobby reappears with even more cryptic warnings, and Colin Creevey’s Petrified figure is admitted for observation in the early hours of dawn. Any evidence of the heir of Slytherin to be found in his camera dissolves in a plume of black smoke, leaving both professors and Harrie similarly befuddled.

“Malfoy, the heir of Slytherin?” queries Hermione sceptically, on a particularly chilly November evening.

Harrie’s little quartet of lions sits huddled by a frosty common room window, as far as possible from Ron’s irritable older brother Percy, who has doggedly carried out his prefect duties in light of the recent attack. Conversation inevitably turns to the subject that has engrossed most of the castle’s inhabitants over the past month, but both girls receive Ron’s theory with a measure of disbelief.

“Malfoy?” echoes Harrie, similarly unconvinced. “It’s one thing for a twelve-year-old to be a prejudiced git, but it’s quite another for him to plot mass murder.”

“Look at his whole family,” insists Ron in a whisper, undeterred. “The whole lot of them have been in Slytherin for ages, why couldn’t they be his descendants as well? They could’ve had the key to the Chamber of Secrets for centuries!”

“Mr Malfoy certainly _seemed_ evil enough,” concedes Harrie. “Do you think he could be the one behind it?”

“Remember what Mrs Longbottom said at King’s Cross? The Malfoys have all sorts of skeletons in their closets,” continues Ron. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the one who put them there in the first place.”

Hermione remains uncertain. “Did your grandmother say anything else about the Malfoys, Neville?” she asks softly, turning to the dark head buried in a textbook.

Since arriving back at school, Neville has undertaken studying with a renewed vigour—Mrs Longbottom was reportedly highly displeased with his first-year marks, which were a source of contention between her and her sister-in-law (“Aunt Enid still thinks I might be a Squib,” he bemoaned, staring hopelessly down at his father’s wand).

Unfortunately, Neville’s efforts have yet to translate into results other than deepening purplish circles under his eyes. Looking up wearily from a particularly dense chapter in _A History of Magic_ , Neville frowns in thought.

“Loads of families have been in Slytherin for generations, just look at the Blacks or the Notts—it doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” he reasons, before adding darkly, “But then again… Gran also thinks Mr Malfoy got off too easily after the last war, that he was never really tricked by You-Know-Who in the first place. Killing Muggle-borns sounds just like something his old master would do.”

While Ron looks vindicated by their friend’s pronouncement, Harrie and Hermione exchange uneasy glances.

“Well,” says Hermione cautiously. “I _suppose_ it’s possible.”

“Before we say anything to anyone, we’d need proof,” decides Harrie firmly. “We need to be absolutely certain that the Malfoys are behind this.”

After the inaugural meeting of the Duelling Club, the question of who exactly opened the Chamber of Secrets becomes a matter of ensuring Harrie’s full vindication. When Pansy Parkinson conjures a fully-grown adder to attack her opponent, Harrie springs into action to minimize the serpent’s range of attack and inadvertently outs herself as a Parselmouth. Containment efforts notwithstanding, certain Hufflepuffs have since industriously encouraged rumours that Harrie is the heiress of Slytherin. Finding Justin Finch-Fletchley’s Petrified body only cements her guilt in the eyes of students, who now give her and her friends a wide berth in classrooms and corridors.

Nightmares preoccupy Harrie’s slumber once more, disrupting her sleep with suffocating green flames and leaving her tired and listless during the day.

Brewing the Polyjuice Potion is, in retrospect, not their finest idea. Not only is the concoction time-consuming and incredibly complex, but their plan almost immediately goes awry upon execution. Hours of tireless brewing prove to be fruitless when Malfoy turns out to be full of hot air, with little more information to add than the unsettling revelation that Slytherin’s monster had killed a Muggle-born fifty years prior.

When school reconvenes in January, their quartet is no better off than before. With a bewhiskered Hermione still laid up in the Hospital Wing, and no further leads other than Harrie’s disconcerting ability to hear disembodied voices, their friend group begins to succumb to the blackening mood gripping the castle.

* * *

Finding Tom Riddle’s diary is a strange bit of luck.

Rumours spread like wildfire through the Great Hall one early February morning, when a Hufflepuff prefect reports that Professor Sprout had been found Petrified in the greenhouses by Hagrid. By their double Potions lesson in the afternoon, Snape unsympathetically informs a hysterical Lavender Brown that Sprout had only fainted when she’d accidentally toppled over a Mandrake pot, and would surely be revived before their next Herbology session. At the sound of the bell, Harrie and the boys race to the infirmary to visit Hermione during the first possible break.

“Is she going to be alright?” Neville asks Madame Pomfrey with a stammer, visibly distressed by the white curtain concealing his favourite teacher from view.

“She’ll be right as rain in a day or so,” assures the nurse kindly, “the Mandrakes are not even pubescent, one cry is hardly fatal yet.” 

Neville stays by Hermione’s sickbed, going over the assigned homework together, while Harrie and Ron scamper off to visit Hagrid before dinner. Rather than face the gaggle of Hufflepuffs waiting anxiously for news of their Head of House, the pair braves the drizzle and takes the long route out the back of the castle. Moving quickly through the rain, they duck around the corner of Greenhouse Three after glimpsing an alarming swirl of turquoise robes, Lockhart’s signature rosewater scent trailing behind him (“Mail order from Witch Weekly and receive an autographed picture!”).

“Oh, disgusting,” groans Ron, extracting his foot from the mulch he’d stepped into with a satisfying _squelch._ “Wait, what’s that?”

Whoever attempted to bury Tom’s diary did a shoddy job of it, leaving a corner jutting out of the freshly-turned dark soil. Once the peculiar journal is in their hands, their quartet is divided as to how to proceed. Although Hermione and Harrie agree that the fifty-year-old diary of a Muggle-born student (one who may have caught the perpetrator) is certainly useful, Ron remains unconvinced that the journal isn’t useless or, worse, cursed. A nervous-looking Neville vehemently backs the latter opinion, citing a book in Mrs Longbottom’s childhood home that was protected with slow-acting poison.

The argument appears to be futile when the diary is revealed to be blank, and no amount of wand-prodding and magic-erasing will summon words into view. Regardless, Harrie keeps the journal in her schoolbag, unable to stop herself from picking it up at night and thumbing through the empty pages. A strange buzzing sensation hums at her fingertips when she does so, unspoken sentences niggling at the back of her mind, and her bedside candle burns low in its holder by the time Harrie finally snuffs it out. Tucking Tom Riddle’s diary under her pillow, she closes her eyes and drifts off into uneasy sleep.

Really, it’s Ginny Weasley that Harrie will have to thank for the idea of writing in the diary. If being rugby-tackled by a winged gnome into receiving a singing valentine isn’t painful enough (“Her eyes are as green as a fresh-pickled toad…”), doing so in front of the furiously blushing sender is the kind of excruciating embarrassment that will haunt Harrie in years to come.

Even after Hermione elbows her to tersely thank Ginny for that bit of public humiliation, Ron’s younger sister still runs off in tears to the sound of Pansy Parkinson’s laughter. At the very least, Harrie can’t walk into the girls’ toilet for a week without setting off a riot of giggles and whispers. However, everything seems worth it when she discovers that—unlike everything else in her ruined schoolbag—Tom Riddle’s diary is perfectly dry, while Hermione eventually spends an hour siphoning scarlet ink splotches off her other textbooks.

 _‘My name is Harriet Potter,’_ she writes in scratchy cursive, the burgundy velvet curtains of her four-poster obscuring her from view as she delves into a fifty-year-old memory.

_‘Hello, Harriet Potter. My name is Tom Riddle. How did you come by my diary?’_

Tom Riddle is not what she expects.

The teenaged boy who guides her through the night he caught the person responsible for the attacks is not the eager goody-two-shoes she anticipated. As she follows Tom throughout Hogwarts of the forties, seeing as he charms the late Headmaster Dippet and evades an auburn-haired Dumbledore’s suspicion, Harrie eyes her escort curiously. _He’s like you,_ whispers a treacherous little voice in the back of Harrie’s mind, _or maybe you’re like him._

Despite the prefect badge shining brightly against his black robes, Tom lacks the obsequious nature she’s come to associate with Percy Weasley and his colleagues. Instead, Harrie feels like she’s watching a chess-player calculate his next move—obsidian gaze coolly assessing the distribution of pieces on the board—and begins to wonder whether she’s a pawn or an opponent.

When Tom divulges that Hagrid opened the Chamber of Secrets, the revelation rings hollow inside of Harrie. The same gentle giant who’d cried at Harrie’s sickbed last year would never be able to live with the guilt of killing an innocent girl. Opening her mouth to tell Tom so, Harrie finds the memory dissolving around her in a blast of light.

Thrown out of the diary with a dizzying jolt, the four-poster curtains are abruptly pulled back to reveal a concerned Hermione, “There you are! I thought we were going over our Transfiguration notes again.”

“Just a second, ‘Mione,” Harrie gasps breathlessly.

“Harrie? Is everything alright?”

Fumbling for Tom Riddle’s diary and throwing it open on her lap, Harrie’s hands shake as she writes on a blank page, _‘You’re lying.’_

An ink splotch appears, as if Tom is pondering a response, before the page hastily scrubs itself entirely clean. Hermione lets out a tiny “Oh!” of surprise.

Slamming the journal shut, Harrie quickly chucks it underneath her bed and turns to face her bewildered friend: “I’ve got something to tell you.”

* * *

Losing Hermione hurts more than Harrie would have ever suspected. When Professor McGonagall pulls her aside before the Quidditch match in late March, a curious Ron in tow, and leads them to the Hospital Wing, nothing could have prepared her for the sight of a motionless Hermione—caramel-brown eyes glassy and unseeing.

“Have you contacted… Richard and Helen?” breathes Harrie, feeling as if there is not enough air in the room. Her voice sounds very far away to her ears.

After the visibly-shaken Grangers come and go, both wrapping a warm arm around Harrie before they depart, the solemn pair is escorted back to Gryffindor Tower by McGonagall. The common room is buzzing with suspicion when they arrive, trading scandalous rumours and half-baked theories, and Lee Jordan loudly advocates expelling all of Slytherin House. Unable to withstand any more outlandish gossip, Harrie whispers to Ron and Neville, “Meet me here after curfew—wait until all the prefects have gone to bed. We’re going to visit Hagrid.”

Despite staying ashen-faced and unresponsive since hearing the news about Hermione, Neville breaks out of his trance to incredulously demand, “Are you out of your _mind?_ There’s a monster running loose, and we can’t just, we can’t just go _gallivanting_ about.”

“Well I can’t sit here and wait any longer,” Harrie hisses back furiously. “Hagrid is the only lead we’ve got, or did you forget someone swiped the diary from my room? We can’t just wait for professors to fix this, not when Hermione’s—” Harrie’s voice catches and she thinks that, for the first time since her conversation with Dumbledore at the end of last year, she’s about to cry.

“You’re not the only one who cares,” whispers Neville, looking both angry and miserable, before storming off to his dormitory.

When Harrie slips downstairs, after shaking off an overly-attentive Parvati and Lavender, only a sheepish Ron awaits their adventure.

The night turns out to be a dead-end. Not only is Hagrid unfairly carted off to the wizarding prison, but Mr Lucius Malfoy and the Minister for Magic succeed in removing Dumbledore from office. Security heightens to new levels within the castles, as teachers take to chaperoning students between lessons. Some revel in the tense atmosphere—Malfoy and some other Slytherins grow emboldened by the headmaster’s absence, snickering in the hallways as Muggle-born students scurry between classrooms looking frightened.

Without any more clues to go on, the pair once again risk incurring Neville’s wrath by breaking curfew and embarking on the worst field trip ever. Even if Aragog and his children don’t succeed in killing Harrie and Ron, who are rescued in the nick of time by stumbling into the nest of a bickering Runespoor that politely offers to escort “the Speaker and her warm-blood” out of the forest, then Harrie is beginning to suspect that Slytherin’s monster surely will.

Harrie knows the last victim was Myrtle—she’s _certain_ —but she can’t risk sneaking off again, not when Neville looks fit to have a stroke after they tell him where they’d been the night before. Though Ron brokers a tenuous peace when he points out that Hermione would call them idiots for fighting over who loved her more, things remain tense between the two friends.

Cheers erupt in the Great Hall when McGonagall announces the Mandrakes will soon be harvested to brew a Restorative Draught, providing a much-needed boost in spirits for the castle’s inhabitants. Even Ron looks cheerful as he helps himself to a plateful of eggs and rashers, scarfing them down as Ginny nervously slides into the seat across from them.

“What’s up?” asks Ron, reaching for a bowl of steaming porridge.

Harrie eyes Ginny curiously. Since Hermione was Petrified, Ginny has often hovered in the periphery of Harrie’s vision, a flash of scarlet in the bathroom mirror or honey-brown eyes watching the trio in the common room. It wouldn’t be odd given Ron’s sister’s well-known affection for Harrie except—this time it felt different. Ginny was _waiting,_ always teetering on the verge of saying something, something important.

“Is everything alright?” Harrie queries, remembering to be patient like Hermione always reminds her to be.

Ginny opens her mouth but nothing comes out, her freckled face transitioning from oddly flushed to deathly pale at the sight of someone approaching. When Harrie turns to look at the Great Hall entrance, a harried-looking Percy Weasley barges into view, taking the seat that Ginny quickly abandons with a fearful look on her face.

“Percy!” Ron protests, shaking his spoon and flicking porridge across the table. “She was just about to tell us something important!”

Slipping into the seat beside Percy, school robes wrinkled and dark hair ruffled, Neville yawns and asks, “Who was about to tell you what?”

“Never mind that,” dismisses Harrie, leaving Ron to the business of railing into his older brother. Serving Neville a mugful of strong, hot coffee as a peace offering, she tentatively smiles at her friend, “McGonagall just announced that the Mandrakes are ready. Hermione will be alright soon enough.”

Even Neville cracks a hopeful grin at that, tucking into his breakfast with more appetite than he had exhibited in days.

* * *

Despite the very real possibility that the mystery of Slytherin’s secret chamber could be resolved by nightfall, Harrie can’t resist the lure of interrogating Moaning Myrtle—especially not when the opportunity presents itself so readily. Professor Lockhart is easily fooled into leaving their cohort unsupervised on their way to class, so eager to retouch his hairdo or curl his lashes, but Neville is not as quickly persuaded. “C’mon, we’ll be late to Binns’ lesson,” he insists, eyeing Ron and her suspiciously.

“It’s just girl troubles,” lies Harrie smoothly, using an excuse she’d heard Lavender give Flitwick, and Neville colours up to his hairline. “Ron can wait for me outside the bathroom, safety in numbers and all that.”

Though Ron looks similarly flushed, he nods in agreement and Neville trots off to join the rest of the second-year Gryffindors. But their victory proves to be short-lived, when Professor McGonagall thwarts their path and Harrie is forced to pretend they were skiving off to visit Hermione. The barefaced lie surprisingly works and a misty-eyed McGonagall promptly redirects the pair in the direction of the Hospital Wing, where they find a lone blonde figure hovering outside the closed doors.

“What are _you—_?” Ron begins to question, but cuts off when a quick _Expelliarmus_ from Harrie sends Malfoy’s loosely-held wand skittering across the stone floor.

“Go inside Ron, I only need a second,” instructs Harrie shortly, and her steely tone silences her friend’s imminent protest. Levelling Malfoy with his nastiest glare, Ron shoves the shorter blonde wizard aside and slips behind the wooden doors.

Turning about to regard Harrie warily, Malfoy crosses his arms and sullenly demands, “What do you want, Potter?”

A terrible anger courses through Harrie, sharp and brittle and rankling at the unfairness of it all. “She deserves better than you,” Harrie retorts, thinking of her best friend laid up in a hospital bed, lifeless and unseeing.

Silver eyes widening, Malfoy pales and sharply asks, “How do you know? Did she tell you?”

Disgusted beyond words, Harrie marches past him and into the infirmary without responding. As Madame Pomfrey lets her through, she hears the school nurse berate Malfoy for skipping class and send him on his way to the dungeons, although not before deducting ten points from Slytherin.

Sitting at Hermione’s bedside, Harrie is only further convinced of her best friend’s brilliance when they discover that the mystery of the Chamber of Secrets had already been solved _—_ the answer hidden within Hermione’s tightly gripped fist. _A basilisk. Pipes. Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom._

Running through the oddly empty halls of Hogwarts, Ron and Harrie head directly for the staff room only to find it quiet, dark, and unoccupied. When Professor McGonagall’s ominous instructions reverberate through the corridors, Harrie makes Ron wait outside the door with her rather than hide in some coat-closet and risk detention for eavesdropping. Slowly distracted-looking teachers file inside, not even noticing them, and it takes a few minutes for the grim-faced deputy headmistress to arrive, flanked on either side by Flitwick and Sprout.

“Professor, we _—_ ” starts Harrie, but the queer expression on Professor McGonagall’s normally stern features gives her pause. “Is… is everything alright?”

Racing heart fluttering in her ears, Harrie barely listens as their Head of House gently explains that Neville Longbottom has been taken into the Chamber itself. _His skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever._ “I will be contacting Augusta shortly … We will be doing everything within our power … It would be best if you return to the common rooms and wait for further information,” the words filter in and out strangely, and Harrie struggles to wrap her head around the idea that Neville— _her_ Neville—was taken into the deepest bowels of the castle, to be held hostage by a monstrous snake.

“Daphne,” interrupts Ron, his voice breaking oddly. “Daphne Greengrass. She’s um … his …” The redhead trails off and awkwardly gestures at his own wrist, where a scuffed-up shieldmark protects his words.

“Of course,” agrees McGonagall delicately. “I’ll have Severus speak to Miss Greengrass privately. For now, please return to the common room. I will be up there shortly.”

The climb up to Gryffindor Tower has never felt as far and steep as it does that afternoon. Neither Harrie nor Ron can bring themselves to say anything on the way up, rendered mute by the terrible shock. A crowded but subdued common room awaits their arrival, with Percy taking one look at their faces before abandoning his prefect’s rebuke over their tardiness. Sensing something truly awful happened, the Weasley siblings circle around the pair, fending off curious gazes and hesitant questions. Under any other circumstances, Harrie would have quite enjoyed watching Ginny Weasley shoo off a curious Lavender and Parvati with a “Not now, you twits!”

The gut-wrenching uncertainty doesn’t go away even when Professor McGonagall sweeps through the portrait hole, gravely announcing to the gathered students that the school will be closing indefinitely after Neville Longbottom was taken into the Chamber.

“We have to do something,” hisses Ron lowly in her ear after McGonagall departs, stunned whispers rippling through the common room in her wake. “You heard what she said—only Lockhart’s fool enough to volunteer, none of the other teachers even know where to start looking—Harrie, are you listening?”

A familiar snowy owl had perched itself on the window closest to Harrie, tapping her beak on the glass and hooting softly to get her attention. “Wait a second, Ron,” responds Harrie absentmindedly, pulling open the window to retrieve the message curled around Hedwig’s right leg. Unfurling the heavy parchment, much nicer than any of her friends owned, Harrie reads the words in flowing, neat cursive: _Whatever hare-brained scheme you’re planning, I want to help._ No signature, certainly no return address.

Trusting her instinct, Harrie grabs a forgotten quill atop a desk and quickly scratches out a reply: _Meet us at Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. Come alone._

Slamming the window shut in her haste, Harrie turns to Ron and begins to drag him out of the common room by his arm: “C’mon, let’s get to Lockhart first.”

Discovering that Lockhart is a complete fraud, rather than only a partial one, comes as a surprise to no one. Harrie suspects that if she survives tonight, holding a professor at wand-point is certainly the kind of thing that would scandalize Hermione and Neville. Still, the pair of second-years lead Lockhart down to Myrtle’s bathroom, where a solitary blonde figure awaits.

“Why is _he_ here?” demands Daphne Greengrass, narrowing her hazel-green eyes at their Defence professor.

“Miss Greengrass! Please, these hooligans _—_ ” but Lockhart yelps when Ron roughly jabs him in the side with the wands, instructing him to, “Shut it, you.”

“Lockhart’s a fraud,” Harrie clarifies, before adding, “but we know how to get into the Chamber. Or, well, at least we think we do.”

It takes some brief negotiating, where Lockhart mostly whimpers and pleads for mercy, but the three second-years ultimately decide that the best plan is for Harrie, Ron, and the professor to go on ahead into the Chamber, while Daphne stays behind and sends for help. Though the Slytherin girl reasons it would be safer to wait for another, more competent member of staff, Ron and Harrie blankly refuse to wait a second longer.

“They can follow us inside if they want to help,” Harrie decides firmly, nudging at Ron to keep a watchful eye on Lockhart, who is inching slowly towards the door.

Looking around at the cavernous bathroom, nothing in the walls or floors gives the slightest hint of being the entranceway into the Chamber. Instead turning to the ghost hovering curiously in the doorframe of her stall, Harrie uses her kindest voice to request, “Myrtle, if you wouldn’t mind, we could _really_ use your help. You see, we need to know what happened the night you died…”

As often happens with Harrie and her friends, nothing is ever quite as straightforward as they’d like. Down the concealed pipe they go, travelling miles beneath the school, landing in darkness and centuries of grime and filth. Lockhart turns on the pair almost immediately, casting a powerful Obliviate with Ron’s faulty wand that backfires like a car in the night. When the dust finally settles and clears the air, Harrie discovers a solid wall of fragmented rock now separates the little witch from her friend and the only known exit to the Chamber.

“Wait there,” she orders, considering the cracks in the ceiling with trepidation. “Wait until Daphne gets help, then the professors can take care of this. I’ll go on ahead.”

Swivelling around to face the bleak stretch of tunnel ahead, Harrie forges onward into the forbidding blackness, following the path’s confusing twists and turns while ignoring the dreadful feeling constricting her oesophagus. Coaxing open the Chamber entrance requires using Parselmouth once more, the serpentine mechanism’s emerald-encrusted eyes flaring to life as the two doors slowly move aside. Heart thudding wildly inside her chest, Harrie finally takes a step inside the Chamber of Secrets.

* * *

“He won’t wake,” says a boyish voice behind Harrie, velvet-smooth and familiar

An icy sensation winds down Harrie’s spine.

Breathless and hunched over Neville’s inanimate figure, Harrie had sprinted down the lengthy chamber once she spotted him sprawled on the damp marble floor, at the foot of Slytherin’s statue. Fingers grasping desperately at his robes, she’s been futilely attempting to shake him into consciousness, his head rolling from side to side. _He’s not dead, he’s not dead. He can’t be dead._

“He won’t wake,” repeats the voice, louder this time, and Harrie turns to look at a tall, attractive sixteen-year-old boy, leaning nonchalantly against the nearest pillar.

“Tom—Tom Riddle,” Harrie breathes, not really asking for confirmation. Despite how impossible it might seem, something inside her knows this hazy apparition really is the same boy who patrolled the halls of Hogwarts fifty years prior. Looking down at Neville, white-faced and barely breathing, she retorts, “You’re lying again,” but this time she isn’t so sure, and she feels so very, very afraid.

“Oh, he’s still alive,” confirms Tom, moving smoothly out of the shadows. “But only just.”

Still kneeling on the floor, Harrie takes a quick survey of her surroundings. Lying open just a few feet away from them is the diary, somehow a crucial component to the mystery of Tom’s reanimation, though Harrie can’t even begin to fathom how. She terribly misses Hermione’s ingenious mind in that second. With a sickening twist of her gut, Harrie realizes her wand—stupidly discarded in her haste to revive Neville—has been snatched from the floor beside her.

A pleasant smile curls dangerously at the edges of Tom’s mouth, and Harrie’s eyes trail down the length of his arm to find him twirling a holly, phoenix-feather wand between elegant fingers.

“I’d like that back, Tom,” Harrie says coolly, much more level-headed than she actually feels.

Tom’s smirk widens: “Oh, you won’t be needing it.”

Time is ticking by and Neville’s skin grows icier by the second. Simultaneously wrangling the wild desperation surging in her chest, Harrie tries again and demands, “Give that back.”

With another twirl of her wand, Tom replies, “I don’t think so, not until we have a little talk… You know, I’ve waited a long time to meet you, Harriet Potter.”

Harrie stares at him in disbelief, “We’ve already talked. Don’t you remember framing Hagrid for murder?”

“That? That was only a memory,” he dismisses, clearly enjoying her distress. “I’m so much more than that now.”

“What are you, then?” demands Harrie impatiently, incensed to be losing precious seconds of Neville’s remaining life. “Why are you even here? How did Neville even get like this?”

“Finally, you’re asking interesting questions,” says Tom agreeably. “Where to start? I suppose the real reason Neville Longbottom is here, in this Chamber, deader than alive, is because he opened his heart and spilt all his little secrets to an invisible stranger.”

Heart dropping uncomfortably, Harrie guesses: “The diary.”

Handsome features lighting up, Tom confirms, “Oh good, you’ve caught on. My diary, yes. Your Neville thought it was a gift from his grandmother, you see, and spent months writing to me about all his troubles and insecurities: his poor grades, his weak magic, his mentally-disabled parents’ legacy… How much he feared losing his much more impressive friends …” His obsidian eyes glint hungrily, “Friends like you—the famous, great, kind Harriet Potter.”

If they both live through this, Harrie thinks desperately, she’s going to give Neville a good shake and a long fierce hug.

As he speaks, Riddle watches her like a vulture circling roadkill: “After a while, it got very boring you know—all that self-pitying, that self-loathing. But I was patient, I wrote back. I was sympathetic, kind, understanding. Soon enough, I was his _friend_ —” Tom laughed, a cold sound echoing within the Chamber “—and I grew stronger by the day, feeding on a steady diet of Mr Longbottom’s deepest fears. By the time he started suspecting anything, I was too powerful, much too powerful for him to fend me off…”

“What do you mean?” asks Harrie calmly, heart in her throat, holding Neville’s limp, freezing hand in a vice-like grip.

“I think you know,” whispers Tom Riddle, coming closer and gracefully crouching down so their gazes were eye-level. Midnight black meets emerald green, and Tom reveals: “Neville Longbottom opened the Chamber of Secrets.”

“No,” grinds out Harrie. “Neville would never…”

“Oh, of course he didn’t mean to,” agrees Tom pleasantly. “But he did… He couldn’t refuse _me._ Neville Longbottom strangled the school roosters and wrote those bloodied threats on the walls. He set Slytherin’s basilisk on those four Mudbloods, yes, even your precious friend—”

 _“Why?”_ interrupts Harrie, tired of Tom’s monologuing and desperate to fast-forward to the end of this terrible mystery. “Why do you even care about this great, old, filthy Chamber? Why set loose the same monster that killed Moaning Myrtle, why—” Harrie cuts off with a realization. “It was _you,_ wasn’t it? You opened the Chamber all those years ago. You framed Hagrid, you murdered an innocent girl—”

“I followed in the footsteps of _my_ ancestor, the great Salazar Slytherin,” breaks in Tom, nearly luminescent with pride. “And I decided to leave behind a diary, preserving the memory of my sixteen-year-old self in its pages, so that one day, another could finish his noblest work.”

“No one has died yet,” Harrie refutes scathingly. “And your victims will be revived soon. I don’t see how this falls under ‘finishing his noblest work.’”

Tom lets out another bemused laugh, as if Harrie was a babbling toddler. “When Neville Longbottom told me the story of a baby girl who mysteriously vanquished the Dark Lord, I was intrigued, even more so when he wrote that you are also a Parselmouth. I’m sorry to say your friend wasn’t even half as interesting as you’ve turned out to be.”

At the mention of _him,_ the cool metal of her shieldmark stings sharply against her wrist, still obscuring her words from view. She’s avoided looking at them for most of the year, wilfully ignoring their presence, pretending they haven’t brought her months of sleepless nights and restless dreams. Harrie stares at Tom Riddle, eyes narrowing suspiciously as if trying to bring him into clearer focus.

“Who are you, Tom?” she asks quietly, sounding vulnerable even to her ears. “Who are you really? Why are you interested in Voldemort? He was before your time.”

“Voldemort,” Tom responds softly, eyes roving over her face, “is my past, present, and future, Harriet Potter…”

With a suave flourish of Harrie’s wand, he traces shimmering letters in the air—TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE— which, upon command, rearrange themselves into the phrase I AM LORD VOLDEMORT.

Blood rushing loudly in Harrie’s ears, she hears only snippets of Tom’s explanation as if it was a far-away radio: “… my filthy, Muggle father… the blood of Salazar Slytherin himself… a name… wizards everywhere would fear to speak… the greatest sorcerer in the world!”

“You’re not,” snaps Harrie, white-hot fury coursing through her veins, and all she wants is to viciously tear into the teenaged boy who grew up to become her parents’ murderer. “You never were the greatest sorcerer in the world, not even when you died. You were frightened by Dumbledore then, and you are still afraid of him now—wherever you are, wherever you’re hiding. That’s what Lord Voldemort has been reduced to: a half-life, a nothing. You’re _insignificant.”_

Rage moves like dark lightning across Tom’s face, twisting his fine features into something brutal, cold, and savage: “That’s where you’re wrong, little Harriet. The moment my curse finishes extracting every single ounce of life left from pitiful Neville Longbottom, then Lord Voldemort will have returned in full strength. Pity you won’t be there to see it.”

Harrie snarls in his face: “I don’t care if I can’t be the one to stop you. If I can’t do it, then Dumbledore will—”

Ignoring her threats, Tom swiftly turns to face the giant statue of Slytherin looming silent above their heads and orders in sibilant Parselmouth: _“Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four.”_

Promptly weighing her chances of survival and rescuing Neville in her head, Harrie immediately takes off at a run, heading away from the statue and towards the exit, strategizing as she weaves through the serpentine columns. Nearly an hour must have passed since she entered the Chamber, giving Daphne plenty of time to call for help. Moving the rocks without collapsing the ceiling must require careful manoeuvring, and Harrie isn’t even sure which professors might be on their way. For all she knows, an enraged Augusta Longbottom could be there as well, blasting her way to her grandson.

Hearing the loud thud of the massive serpent’s heavy body on the marble floor, Harrie accelerates her pace, Tom’s chilling laughter taunting her from a distance. Reaching the entrance, left wide-open from Harrie’s arrival, she can hear far-off voices making their way down the winding tunnel. Relief washes over her, except—

“Turn back!” Harrie screams desperately in their direction, realizing Slytherin’s serpent is right at her heels. “The basilisk is headed your way!”

Ducking behind one of the nearest columns, Harrie struggles to control her trembling hands and forces herself to steady her breathing and think. She knows she needs to go back, she still needs to get Neville, but she’s four-foot-eight and can’t face a fully-grown basilisk all by herself. Wishing she’d thought to bring her invisibility cloak, Harrie holds herself as stock-still and silent as possible, picturing all the potentially gruesome ways she could die, when a flash of scarlet swoops in from above.

Though Dumbledore's phoenix comes to the rescue in its full sunset-plumed glory, the bird, the Hat, and the sword are not enough to spare Harrie. After plunging the ruby-encrusted blade into the roof of the basilisk’s mouth, Harrie collapses onto the floor drenched in the serpent’s blood, Fawkes piping his eerie tune nearby.

Not for the first time in her young life, Harriet Potter is struck with the undeniable certainty that she is about to die.

Tendrils of blinding pain wind up her forearm, where, only seconds prior, a massive venomous snake had sunk a lethally sharp fang into her bare flesh. Cheek pressed against the damp cold of the chamber’s flooded marble floor, Harrie shivers helplessly and blearily looks on as viscous scarlet bleeds through the sleeve of her robes. Vision blurring, the Chamber of Secrets’ cavernous ceiling dissolves into a whirl of darkness, and the small crumpled figure in black school robes taunts Harrie with defeat, lying motionless a few feet out of reach.

Above her looms a tall, boyish figure—Tom—no, _Voldemort_ , who gently runs the tip of Harrie’s stolen wand over the curve of her thin cheek. “You’re dead, Harriet Potter,” whispers Voldemort softly, and her soulmate’s handsome young face twists into a smile.

Crimson-gold plumage swims into her vision and the phoenix’s mournful song rings closer. Letting her eyelids flutter shut, Harrie attempts to drift off into the darkness… Granted, if this was dying, it was certainly less painful than she’d come to expect.

“Get away bird,” orders Tom brusquely, and a shower of angry red sparks sends Fawkes flying away. Holly wand held aloft, Tom stares down at Harrie, who breathes heavily as she struggles to sit up. “Phoenix tears have healing powers,” he informs her, much as Dumbledore had all those months ago. “But it makes no difference, not really. It’s better this way… It’s a mercy really, it won’t even hurt at all…”

In a rush of wings, Fawkes swoops below to drop something into Harrie’s lap— _the diary_ —its blank pages falling open expectantly. Seizing the moment before Tom can decipher what she’s about to do, Harrie lunges for the venomous fang beside her and plunges its needle-sharp tip straight into the spine.

“You’ve always been such a _liar,_ Tom,” she grits out, twisting the fang with relish.

The sixteen-year-old figure of Tom Riddle collapses to the floor, obsidian eyes meeting Harrie’s with a mingled expression of realization and betrayal, and he futilely reaches out—she can’t tell if it is a cry for help or an attempt to strangle her. Briefly, Harrie considers taking his hand, but the thought comes a second too late. Thrashing violently in pain, Tom dissolves into fulgurating light, his awful guttural cry shuddering the cavernous ceiling.

When help arrives, in the shape of a sprinting Ron leading Professors McGonagall and Flitwick and a completely befuddled Lockhart, they find Harrie with her arms around Neville, who sobs uncontrollably into her shoulder. Beside them is Fawkes, nuzzling the top of his head consolingly against Neville’s side.

“It’ll be alright, we’ll be alright,” Harrie reassures him softly, warily eyeing the lethal-looking fang jutting out of Tom’s diary. “It’s all over now.”

* * *

When the group emerges from the pipe that leads to the Chamber, Professor McGonagall instantly directs them to her office, where she had left Headmaster Dumbledore holding his own against a furious Mrs Longbottom. After the children are revealed to be safe, the matronly witch envelops her ashen-faced grandson in a fierce embrace, and Harrie catches an expression of well-worn grief under the brim of her vulture hat.

With Mrs Longbottom demanding an explanation, the truth comes out. Harrie recounts the events leading up to the present, scrambling for ways to avoid implicating her friend as the culprit. When she finally arrives at the diary, Harrie falters in her story-telling, not wanting to see Neville expelled for circumstances beyond his control.

“It was me,” admits Neville, voice trembling. “I opened the Chamber, I did all those terrible things—”

“No, it wasn’t!” objects Harrie loudly, but Neville’s confession rolls out in a torrent of words and drowns her out.

“I was the one who unleashed the basilisk, I wrote those messages on the wall, I was the one who, who, who _hurt_ all those Muggle-borns… I was the one who attacked Hermione,” Neville finishes quietly, shame-faced and looking down at his water-logged shoes.

The silence in McGonagall’s office is dreadful. Holding the diary in her hands, Harrie isn’t quite sure how to present it as evidence—there is no way to summon Tom anymore, not that he would have been gracious enough to testify. Meeting Dumbledore’s celestial-blue gaze instinctively, Harrie struggles for a way to wordlessly convey that there is more to the story than just Neville’s compulsive admission of guilt.

“Thank you for your honesty, Mr Longbottom, but I would like to give credit where credit is due,” says Dumbledore gently, with a faint smile. “Harrie, can you please explain how Lord Voldemort came to enchant one of my students and reopen the Chamber of Secrets, when my sources tell me he is currently hiding in the forests of Albania?”

Mrs Longbottom looks up sharply, “What’s this about Voldemort possessing my Neville?”

Avoiding Mrs Longbottom’s flinty stare, Harrie places the battered diary on the desk and explains how Tom Riddle bewitched it to preserve the living memory of his sixteen-year-old self. On the verge of tears, Neville acknowledges having written in the journal under the impression it was a gift, unwittingly establishing a friendship with a teenaged Dark Lord. The poor boy almost shrinks under his grandmother’s gaze when he describes making the connection between the series of attacks and his unexplainable lapses in memory.

“I tried to get rid of him, I swear I did,” insists Neville mournfully. “When I realized something was wrong, I tried burying the diary outside the greenhouses in some fertilizer. It smelled so terrible, I never thought anyone would find it there… And that night, when I saw Mr Filch and ran off, I must have startled Professor Sprout, so then I felt horrible for days—”

“Mr Longbottom,” says the headmaster kindly, cutting off Neville’s rambling _mea culpa._ “Wizards much older and wiser than yourself have been deceived by Lord Voldemort. It is clear to me, as well as your friends and family, that you feel genuine remorse for transgressions committed through no fault of your own. Rest assured, there will be no further punishment.” Sinking gratefully into an unoccupied chair, Neville looks about ready to pass out from relief.

“Now, perhaps it would be best for you to head straight to the Hospital Wing for a medical examination and some bedrest,” adds Dumbledore, eyes twinkling merrily. “You will find Madame Pomfrey awake, I believe she is in the process of administering the Restorative Draughts.”

“So, Hermione will be okay?” interjects Harrie, starting to feel hopeful after a very long and emotionally exhausting night.

“There has been no lasting harm done,” confirms Dumbledore pleasantly. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, I’d like a moment with Miss Potter and Mr Weasley—”

A quiet cough interrupts the headmaster. Under the brim of her sizable headwear, Mrs Longbottom looks thunderous.

“No lasting harm? I would beg to differ with that assessment… Over the years, my family has put a great deal of trust in you, Dumbledore. We have offered our financial resources, our Wizengamot votes, and even ourselves when required by your cause,” says Mrs Longbottom frostily. “But the more carelessly you treat their lives, the more I’m inclined to wonder whether our trust has been misplaced.”

Sweeping midnight-blue skirts rustling as she rises swiftly to her feet, Mrs Longbottom places a firm hand on her grandson’s shoulder to guide him to the door. “Come, Neville—Harriet, Ronald, I expect to see both of you down there as well,” she instructs, before adding, “Minerva, I’d like a private word before I leave,” and letting the door swing shut behind them.

A shadow of weary sadness crosses the headmaster’s face, the twinkle dimming significantly. “Some wounds never heal,” Dumbledore sighs heavily, “and rightly so.”

Falling silent, the aging professor brings out an embroidered handkerchief and rubs at his half-moon spectacles, seeming lost in thought. The room is quietly expectant until Professor McGonagall inquires, “Anything else, Albus?” and the headmaster perks his head, as if remembering they’re still there.

“Ah yes, Minerva, before you have that word with Mrs Longbottom, might I request you notify the kitchens that I believe recent events will merit a good feast?” he says, some of his usual demeanour returning to his tone.

Moving to slip through of her office door, McGonagall pauses at the frame and considers Harrie and Ron thoughtfully before ordering, “After Professor Dumbledore deals with you, both of you will head straight to the Hospital Wing for a full medical check-up.”

‘Being dealt with’ by the headmaster turns out to be receiving Special Awards for Services to the School and two-hundred points for Gryffindor apiece. Poor Ron blushes as brightly as Lockhart’s favourite pink Valentine’s Day robes, but Harrie is quick to remind Dumbledore that there was another student helping them that night.

When Professor Snape alerted the other staff, the headmaster informs them, he refused to reveal the identity of the student who’d tipped him off to Harrie and Ron’s whereabouts (“He insisted your prior record for daring recklessness and, I quote, ‘general disregard for rules’ made it a credible allegation”). If Miss Greengrass does not want to be credited as one of Neville’s unlikely saviours, Dumbledore says, then they must respect her decision.

“Please, take a seat, Harrie,” requests the headmaster politely, after Ron leaves to escort the amnesiac Lockhart to the infirmary, and gestures to a pair of comfortable armchairs by McGonagall’s mantelpiece.

When they are seated facing each other, the magnificent phoenix perches himself on Dumbledore’s armrest, allowing the headmaster to stroke the scarlet crown of his head. “If you must know, Harrie, only the sincerest show of loyalty to me could have summoned Fawkes down to the Chamber. Let me thank you,” he says, the sparkle reappearing in his eye. “I must say I’m quite touched.”

Feeling her cheeks grow hot, Harrie can only shrug helplessly: “It was nothing, sir.”

“Ah, but it was not quite nothing, was it?” Dumbledore replies with a knowing look. “So, you have finally met Tom Riddle… I imagine he was _most_ interested in you…”

“He didn’t know, if that’s what you mean,” responds Harrie, unable to help herself, before tacking on a hasty, “sir.”

Leaning back in his chair and clasping his hands together, the headmaster takes a thoughtful pause before continuing, “My child, I hope you forgive an old man the intrusion, but may I ask—has meeting Tom troubled you? It would only be natural.”

And Harrie thinks.

Sitting in her sweat-soaked and blood-stained school robes, finally coming down from the adrenaline rush of barely escaping certain death, she attempts to sift through the cluttered mess of thoughts and emotions inside of her. She thinks about Tom—his deceptive charm, his innate cruelty, his self-aggrandizing nature, and his complete lack of empathy. She sees all his faults and understands, clearly, how his teenage-self grew into the murderous megalomaniac who killed her parents.

And yet—Harrie is haunted by their similarities.

There is the obvious, of course: both orphaned half-bloods, Parselmouths, with corresponding words on their wrists. But if Harrie is completely honest with herself, there’s more to it than that. When Harrie sees Tom, she sees the worst and best parts of herself reflected in him, like the distorted image in a funhouse mirror, and it frightens her. The unspoken bond between them, the bond Harrie’s spent all year willing out of existence, weighs heavier than ever on her magic. Even now, hours after Tom’s memory has faded into nothing, she feels the pull: persistent, painful, and undeniable.

Despair surging inside of her like a flash-flood, Harrie begins to doubt Hermione’s words, to question that soulmarks are a matter of choice and free will. She feels this distress so acutely and, looking into Dumbledore’s grandfatherly expression, it would be so easy to confide in the headmaster, but…

Augusta Longbottom’s words stifle the confession bubbling in her throat, and Harrie thinks hard. She thinks about the tired sorrow in the matronly witch’s gaze, she thinks about her friends laid up in the Hospital Wing after months of relentless attacks, and she even thinks about the bitterness in Tom's voice when speaking about Dumbledore. Most of all, she thinks about her conversation with the headmaster at the end of first year, when he’d chosen to spare her young mind the details of that fateful Hallowe’en night, eleven years ago.

And so, looking into the headmaster’s expectant blue eyes, Harrie summons up the courage to do the only thing she thinks she can do. Harrie tells the truth, by halves: “Not really, sir. After all, he’s still my parents’ murderer. I can’t ever forget that.”

The elderly wizard gives her a strange smile, a queer mix between compassion and pity, and Harrie cannot tell whether he believes her. She never finds out, either, because that is the moment Lucius Malfoy decides to storm inside McGonagall’s office and throw the grown-wizard equivalent of a tantrum, with a poorly-abused little house elf in tow.

* * *

Staring up at her bedroom ceiling, the patter of summer rain against her window, Harrie soaks in the mundaneness of Privet Drive and wonders whether a full year has really transpired since she was last sprawled on this tiny twin bed. When she tiptoes to look in the Dursleys’ bathroom mirror, she can tell the difference—Harrie’s an inch taller, although just barely, and her dark loose curls now hang somewhere between her shoulder blades. In the true spirit of predictability, Aunt Petunia has already threatened to hack them off with garden shears.

With textbooks, broom, and wand locked away downstairs, Harrie can’t help but ruminate on her conversation with Professor McGonagall from the final day of term.

_After requesting that Harrie come by her office before the Leaving Feast, Professor McGonagall welcomed her with a steaming cup of milky tea and a plateful of chocolate biscuits. In her usual no-nonsense manner, the professor launched into an explanation that left the younger witch feeling both strangely exposed and incredibly vulnerable. Mrs Longbottom, McGonagall told her, had spent the past year making delicate inquiries into the legal status of Harrie’s guardianship. Having discovered certain irregularities in Harrie’s custody arrangement, Neville’s grandmother wanted to know whether Miss Potter would like to proceed with consulting a family solicitor, all expenses paid by the House of Longbottom._

_Sliding an envelope across the desk, the older witch asked gently, “Miss Potter, could you please explain this address we found in your personal file?”_

**_Miss H. Potter_ **

**_The Cupboard under the Stairs_ **

**_4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey_ **

_Refusing to meet Professor McGonagall’s gaze, Harrie looked down at her hands in her lap, unaware she’d been clenching them in the folds of her school skirt. Clock ticking by on the mantelpiece, the seconds of silence seemed to stretch out interminably long between them._

_“This upcoming year will be my thirty-seventh at Hogwarts,” continued the professor, choosing her words carefully. “Many students have passed through this office, from very different backgrounds. My door has been open to all of them, Miss Potter, as it remains open for you. Please, take however much time you need to consider Augusta’s offer.”_

With another miserable summer at the Dursleys’ looming ahead, Harrie turns Mrs Longbottom’s proposition over in her mind. After all her quips about them, Harrie knows she should be leaping at the chance to escape her family, not that her aunt and uncle had ever treated her as such. But making self-deprecating jokes about life with the Dursleys is quite different from the very real possibility of being removed from the care of her only relatives.

Harrie’s stomach twists uncomfortably, and not because it has yet to readjust to Privet Drive’s meagre portion sizes.

That’s the trouble, isn’t it? The Dursleys are her family, Harrie’s _only_ family. Of course, they’d never been kind to her, but their treatment didn’t constitute abuse, or whatever Professor McGonagall seemed to think was happening at Privet Drive. Or did it? A headache is beginning to pulsate at Harrie’s temples.

It wouldn’t be the first time an adult had expressed concern about Harrie’s upbringing. In primary school, her Year 4 teacher had requested a meeting with the Dursleys and a child psychologist to discuss Harrie’s ‘concerning behavioural patterns’. But if her relatives were really such terrible guardians, then Harrie would have certainly been taken away a long time ago. Aunt Petunia might not have been as marvellous as Hermione’s mum, but Harrie couldn’t be sure if Dr Helen was the standard or just a splendid exception.

Sighing at the prospect of yet another restless night, Harrie rolls over in bed and presses her face into the lumpy pillow. At least Mrs Longbottom’s impertinence has given her something different to obsess over, rather than the usual thoughts that inhabit Harrie’s mind after nightfall.

Tracing her fingers over the cool gold of her shieldmark, a strange tingle winds its way down Harrie’s spine. Nowadays, she sees Tom everywhere she goes—Harrie catches flashes of him in the edges of bathroom mirrors, in the shadows of corridors, or hovering around street corners. It’s all in her mind, of course, Harrie knows this. Even if Lord Voldemort were traipsing about the suburban streets of Little Whinging trying to find her, his adult self bears no resemblance to the handsome teenager of his journal.

Still, it’s driving her mad, constantly startling and jumping at any sign of his reappearance. With Hermione off on her summer holiday in France, Harrie is in desperate need of someone to confide in.

“I wish you were here,” whispers Harrie into the quiet solitude of her bedroom.

A moonbeam from her window, propped open for Hedwig’s return, slants across the bedside table, casting a pearlescent light on the smiling faces in the picture frame. It’s Harrie’s favourite photograph of them: James and Lily Potter on their wedding day, on the steps of a village church. A crown of white lilies tucked into her shining red hair, Harrie’s mother beams at the camera while her spectacled husband gazes down at her adoringly. Occasionally, two good-looking men drift into the background, clearly shouting something from the inside of the church that elicits pink-faced peals of laughter from the newlyweds.

Feeling herself begin to drift off to sleep, Harrie wonders what being raised by her mum and dad would have been like. For one, she would have had a normal soulmate, or maybe no soulmate at all—that would be nice, she muses. Harrie can just imagine it: a vine-covered cottage with a flowering garden, filled to the brim with carefree joy and affection. It’s a version of the world where Mrs Longbottom doesn’t feel the need to make inquiries on her behalf, because Harrie knows her parents would have been wonderful. They were kind, brave, and _brilliant._ Or at least, she assumes so.

Harrie’s final thought, before ultimately succumbing to the lure of slumber, is that she wishes that there was someone who could tell her if they were.

**Author's Note:**

> Finally, we’ve arrived at the point in this story where Harrie’s life begins to slowly diverge from canon. Up until now, Harrie has made similar choices to canon!Harry, leading to similar outcomes, because for the most part their beliefs and priorities remain the same. However, since Harrie identifies as a girl, the authority figures she values, respects, and emulates will differ greatly from canon. Rather than searching for a father figure, Harrie’s adolescence will be shaped by influential women—something that will come into play later on.
> 
> Second, Harrie remains a bit oblivious and a short-sighted narrator. There’s plenty that happens in the background of this fic, from Mrs Longbottom’s meddling to Neville’s use of the diary, that goes entirely unnoticed by Harrie’s single-mindedness. Hopefully, it wasn’t too obvious Neville was possessed instead of Ginny, although poor Ginny was essentially bullied into retrieving the diary for him (which Neville will spend the rest of his life apologizing for).
> 
> Lastly, as I see it, soulmarks and soulmates are a very private business in the wizarding world. Though widely researched, they’re not very well understood—there’s multiple theories as to where they come from and what purpose they serve. The most common myth is the one Neville describes in the first part of this series: a blessing granted by the Fates, which is an old pure-blood belief. Because of how intimate soulmate bonds can be (and I emphasize, not necessarily romantic), Harrie remains unaware of other soulbonds unless they’re explicitly stated in her presence. Moreover, soulmarks don’t mean love at first sight, which I tried to demonstrate with Neville and Daphne. It’s still a process, a negotiation of sorts, between two people who have yet to grow into compatible partners. For Harrie, now entering her teenage years, this means dating is very much a thing at Hogwarts, which she’ll discover soon enough.
> 
> Once again, thank you so much for reading! I'm in the process of sketching out part three and working on my other fic, so hopefully both will be out within the month. Stay healthy everyone!


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